


In Hand

by gondalsqueen



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: F/M, Fancy Flying, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Space family, rough landings, slightly fluffy, totally appropriate use of the Force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-02
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-26 04:57:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13850556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gondalsqueen/pseuds/gondalsqueen
Summary: "Kanan couldn’t make sense of it, and then he did. Whatever they’d hit had cracked the cockpit viewport. The safeties had engaged, sealing it off from the rest of the ship.Hera at the helm and Ezra on the nose gun. They were in there losing air."The Ghost crew has a rough landing. Here, have some fancy flying followed by some fluff, courtesy of our Space Family.





	In Hand

**Author's Note:**

> Place this wherever you please in Season 3.

They were six hours into reconnaissance, the Ghost camouflaged in a literal minefield, when the TIEs showed up. Sitting at the turret gun, Kanan felt them launch from the base they’d been watching. Sometimes the Force was better than eyes. “Hera…” 

“What? Oh, I see them. Looks like we’ve been spotted, guys. Sabine, did you send that intel?” 

“One military base and mining operation, tagged, photographed, reported to the Alliance.”

“Chop, get our jump loaded. Zeb, rear guns.”

Zeb’s voice came over the comms, accompanied by the sound of him scrambling up a ladder, “How many of them?”  

“Four,” Kanan told him.

“Oh, easy peasy.”

“Not if they detonate one of these mines on top of us while they’re still at a distance!” Hera said. “Hold on, we’re going to run.”

“Did she just say, ‘hold on’ again?” Zeb groused.

The Ghost upended and sped for open space at a clip faster than any ship threading its way through a minefield had a right to take. 

“Ezra, if something’s going to get in our way, blast it.”

“Copy, Hera.”  

They twisted 90 degrees and slipped through the narrow gap between two mines, and then Hera really hit the fuel. 

Obstacle course, Kanan thought. She’s loving this.

“Not that I’m doubting the two of you — ” Zeb again, nervous — “but if nose gun there blasts something in front of us, aren’t we just going to fly right into the explosion?”

“That’s why I’m not blasting anything in front of us. I’m blasting things that are GOING to be in front of us, didn’t you hear her?” 

How had Ezra come so far without losing one bit of that obnoxious know-it-all tone? Still, using the Force to anticipate what would be in their way before it got too close... that was some quality learning on the job.

Zeb grumbled. “I don’t get it.”

“You don’t HAVE to get it, just — ”

“Hey!” Hera cut them off.

They swung abruptly port to avoid the first shots, narrowly missing an explosive. The shots flew past them and detonated a mine just ahead. Now they weren’t on a straight course out anymore and things were going to get a little more complicated.

“Kanan, Zeb, could I get some return fire, please?”

“On it.” The quick patter of Zeb tracking the fighters with the Phantom’s guns, but he only hit some mines behind them. Kanan felt the detonation through the Force, and then a secondary explosion as the blast caught one of the TIE fighters. “You got one!”

“Really? I can’t see anything through that smoke.” 

“Kanan? Dear?” Hera’s tone was pointed. 

“We’re not in position yet.” 

“You want me to slow down?!”

“No, just — ”

She hit the brakes though, and the Ghost spun one of those disorienting twists, lining up both Kanan and Zeb for perfect shots. Kanan waited for his moment, fired once, and caught the TIE that was nearly on top of them right in the wing. It spun off, hitting a mine far above them. A moment later Zeb sighted the other one and shot it to pieces outright.

On the open comm channel, Ezra howled in triumph.

“Good shots!” Hera added.

Sabine commed in from the relay in the common room. “You guys might want to delay the congratulations…”  

“I see them.” Hera. 

Kanan couldn’t see them, but he could feel them, dozens of TIE fighters coming in on their tail.

“We’re almost out...Chop, do you have coordinates?”

Chopper blatted out a definite maybe.

“Ezra, clear everything in front of us. Chopper, do it!” Hera said, and when Chopper argued with her, she repeated, “I trust you, just DO it!” 

The first shots detonated everything behind them. This group wasn’t messing around.  The Ghost wobbled with the concussion waves, then went perfectly still as the hyperdrive kicked in and then — zzpp there was the old stomach-lurch of a hyperspace jump — aaaaand they were away.

“Five minute jump to the safehouse,” Hera warned. “Stay alert.” Stay in your positions, in other words.

They all felt it as soon as the ship dropped out of hyperspace. A normal descent into real time and then immediately — thoom. The ship rocked. Hera cursed prolifically. Not an energy blast or the shields would have deflected it, though. They must have run into something coming out of the jump.

The power cut. In the tense ten seconds of darkness before the backup generator came online, they all sat quietly and listened. Then the Ghost hummed to life again. Kanan had his quip about Hera’s flying all ready to go when the comms cut back in on Ezra and Hera yelling in the cockpit — some kind of argument or something that needed fast action. “Don’t let go!” Hera was saying. 

“Kanan, Zeb!” Sabine yelled. “Do you read? The temperature just dropped twenty degrees in here.” 

Kanan jumped down the turret shaft and took the hall at a sprint. “Ezra? Hera? What’s going on?”

The yelling stopped — or at least it changed tacks and Hera yelled at him instead — “It’s fine, I’ve got it, just stay where you are.”

He was already at the door of the cockpit, Sabine moving aside to let him past, and it was definitely chilly in here now. He palmed the controls.

The blasted door wouldn’t open.

“Hera?!”

“We’re fine, the door sealed itself off. Ezra, can you manage?”

“What’s going on up there?” Zeb joined them. The cold from the door felt like a physical assault, even with it tightly shut.

His padawan’s voice, strained. “I’ve got it.”

Kanan couldn’t make sense of it, and then he did. Whatever they’d hit had cracked the cockpit viewport. The safeties had engaged, sealing it off from the rest of the ship.

Hera at the helm and Ezra on the nose gun. They were in there losing air.

Kanan’s lightsaber was in his hand a half second before he realized it, but Hera heard the hum through the door. “Kanan Jarrus, don’t you DARE cut my ship apart. We’re fine.”

“Like sith you are.”

Ezra’s voice: “Herrrraaa…” 

“Pace yourself. Fifteen minutes. Can you hold it?” 

Kanan couldn’t hear a response.

“Chop, have you found it yet?”

A contemptuous blat. 

“Good droid. Fourteen and a half minutes Ezra. You’re doing great.”

“Hera — ”

“Kanan, I swear if you start in on me again I will turn these comms off. We’re bringing her into berth. Everything’s going to be fine.” He heard the strain in her voice, though. She was flying hard.  

“You’re going to make it,” she told Ezra.

 

…

 

In the cockpit, Ezra was beginning to tremble and sweat. Air hissed by Hera’s face, a warm stream on its way out the fissure in the foreward viewscreen. All those other fractal lines, cracks in the transparisteel that should have shattered outwards and killed her, stayed steady in place under Ezra’s outstretched hand. He’d jumped up from the nose gun as soon as she’d heard the impact and grabbed the glass before he got his footing. Then he’d staggered. We’re dead, she’d thought, but he’d righted himself and planted his feet, and he was holding. The last thing they needed was a distraction, or more air from behind them pressing against the glass making it harder to hold. 

But now everything depended on how long Ezra could hold the viewport and how quickly she could land on the little moonlet that was their safehouse, and the two of them were freezing.

Behind her, Chopper blatted in contrition. “I know it’s a good port,” Hera told him. Also, “No, Chop, it’s not your fault. I made you jump too soon. You got us here.” She checked her instruments. They were going to make it, if she could stay warm enough to land them. She squeezed her thighs and fists together in a steady pulse. Come on, blood. Keep pumping to my limbs. It’s not time to land yet.

Little meanders of frost climbed from the middle of the viewport towards the edges. Hera tried to bank starboard and had to turn her whole torso, her arms too cold and stiff to move. She wasn’t going to be able to bring them in with the finesse this landing required. “Chopper, switch piloting to your port. You land us.”

He clipped out a long and only vaguely apologetic objection.

“What do you mean it’s STICKING?” she asked.

Instead of answering, Chopper gave a detailed explanation of why the malfunction wasn’t his fault. She was going to disassemble that droid with her bare hands someday. “Well that’s convenient, isn’t it? You guys might want to find something to hold onto. I’m not making any guarantees about this landing.” 

“Great.” 

“Zeb, shut up.” She imagined Sabine punching him in the shoulder. Good to know they were keeping morale up back there. 

The sweat had frozen on Ezra’s face, and his fingers didn’t look great either. “Ten minutes,” she told him soothingly. She wasn’t sure he could hear her.

Luckily THESE rocks were far apart. Hera found a place between bands on the planet’s rings and sped them straight in until they reached one of the biggest asteroids, practically a moon amidst the rest of the flotsam, with a tiny Rebel hideout waiting for them and an even tinier landing strip. Then she started their descent, an easy angle rather than the dive she might have taken if the ship or her body had been up for regular flying.

The runway rose at them, orange makers on either side to show her just how little space they had. She couldn’t feel her hands so she leaned back to raise their nose. She’d overcompensated though, the ground coming at them too fast when their rear repulsors hit with a thud that bounced the whole ship back into the air. Ezra flew up, then slammed down against the deck and lost his grip, and a chunk of the viewport shattered outwards. It’s okay, it’s okay, Hera thought. We’re here. We made it. She braked hard and took them into dock, through the forcefield and into the hanger, hitting its back wall with a crash that made her wince. The impact tossed Ezra like a stuffed tooka against the front panels.

Beep, went the cockpit door behind her — the sound of somebody mashing on the controls, but it wouldn’t open yet.

“Ezra! Talk to me!” 

“M’okay,” he got out, though clearly he was barely there. Conscious and alive though, and well enough to let her know it. That was good.

Beep, beep, beep, went the door alarm. Then pressure equalized between the two rooms and the cockpit hatch whooshed open.  

“Are you guys okay?” Kanan demanded. 

“What the kriff — Ooooh.” Sabine caught sight of the viewport. 

Kanan was kneeling over Ezra, talking to him quietly, checking him for injury, a hand on his forehead. 

“Is he okay?” Sabine asked, dropping beside them to take a look herself. She smacked his cheek gently. “Hey, Ezra.” 

His voice sounded stronger now. “I’m all right! Ow, stop hitting me!”

“Are YOU okay?” Kanan asked Hera, and they all looked at her.

“Chop and I are fine. Ezra held the viewport with a Force grip the whole time, and he took the worst of the crash.”    


“We’ll check him over and get him warm,” Zeb promised. “Come on, kid.” He picked Ezra up easily. “Let’s get you some hot water bottles.” 

“Or maybe the shower,” Sabine said as they left. “I’ll be back, Hera, and we’ll figure out how to patch that.” 

“There should be tools at this base,” she told them. 

Kanan squeezed her shoulder on the way past, a question on his face. 

“Go take care of Ezra,” she told him. “I just need to warm up, but I don’t know what that took out of him.” 

Kanan nodded. “That,” he said, “Was a very exciting landing.” Then he kissed her temple and left her alone with Chopper in the cockpit, and that was when she got warm enough to start shivering. Time to go get some hot water bottles herself. Except she couldn’t, she realized — even her legs were clamped tightly into position, and there was no chance her arms or hands were going to respond to signals from her brain. What was this? Not jitters, the landing hadn’t been THAT bad. And she didn’t think she was much injured, though feeling had yet to return to her limbs. Just cold, she supposed, combined with the facts that she’d clenched her muscles on purpose and that she’d sat in one place doing some careful piloting for...seven hours straight now. Not ideal.

Chopper beeped a question. 

“Temporarily frozen in place,” she told him. “Like the settings on your port back there, by the way. I told you to keep those things in working order.” 

He pretended not to hear the second part. Did she want him to go get Kanan?

“No, I’ll warm up. Just give me a little time to get the gears oiled again.”

Humans didn’t have gears, he supplied helpfully.

She sat for twenty minutes, waiting for her muscles to unclench, torn between frustration and laughter at the absurdity of the situation, and gradually her shivering died down. By the time she finally heard footsteps in the passageway, she’d admitted to herself that she was going to need some help. “Thought I’d find you up here,” Kanan was saying as his boots thumped down the hallway. “Ezra’s all warmed up. How is the Gho — ” he came through the cockpit door and stopped. “Have you moved?” he asked.

She shook her head out of habit, then added, “No.”  

“Hera, are you...stuck?”

“Yes,” she said sheepishly. 

“Really?” His face lit up with mischief. Great. 

“If you tickle me right now we are through.”

He laughed a little then came to help. “What happened? I’ve never seen you freeze up before, and the landing wasn’t THAT bad.” She shot him a dirty look that he couldn’t see as he put his hand on her forearm. “Oh wow. Are you one big muscle spasm?”

“I think so.” 

“Why didn’t you comm me? Or have Chopper come after me, if you couldn’t reach?” 

Chopper returned an exasperated  _ that’s what I told her _ and took off, glad that his captain-sitting duty was over.

“Kanan, I’m okay. It’s just embarrassing. And Ezra was…” She didn’t know what. “Freezing. How is he?” 

“Warm and tired and mostly fine, but we used up all of the hot water.” He started on one of her arms, massaging it gently at first, although she couldn’t feel much through her flight suit. 

“He was fantastic. He had the whole viewport stabilized before I even realized what was happening.”

“What DID happen?”

“I rushed Chopper on the jump and we came in a few thousand kilometers closer to the planet’s rings than we should have and hit a rock.”

“Bad luck.”

The muscles in her arms began to ache, fatigued. Feeling was returning. “Not the worst.”

“Good pilot.”

“Good team,” she said. Then her left bicep seized up, and he must have felt the cramp under his fingers because he was working at it before she even hissed in pain.

“Relax,” he said in that soothing Jedi voice, and she was about to tell him she was trying when the muscle relaxed itself.

“Oh,” she sighed in relief. That was a neat trick.

“Okay,” he switched arms, “looks like this is going to hurt until we can get all the kinks out.” That muscle spasmed too — or her awareness of the pain returned, at least — but Kanan’s hands were on it, doing that thing, and the cramp was gone almost immediately.

“It  _ doesn’t  _ hurt,” she said in surprise. 

He gave her a wink, awkward and endearing since he’d just re-learned the gesture, then dropped his attention to her hands. “I’m going to work on getting your fingers loose, okay? Then we can get you out of here and do your legs somewhere else.” 

“Somewhere else, huh? Kanan Jarrus, are you flirting with me?” 

“Virtually one hundred percent of the time.”  

He didn’t even try to get the gloves off, and he carefully massaged instead of prying her loose. A minute later her fingers began to tingle, but not with those awful prickles that usually indicated returning feeling. This was...nice. An ever-sharpening ache began in her hands, but her fingertips still felt...warm. “Are you…?” she asked. 

“Am I what?” He didn’t let her answer though. “Hera, these two are broken for sure.” She didn’t know how he could tell, blind and touching her fingers through gloves, but she didn’t know how he managed half the things he did, so that wasn’t surprising. 

“Rotten luck,” she said through clenched teeth. 

“Yeah.” He bent over her hands. Then, “We’ll take good care of them.” He was frowning, though. Bone knitters would heal her hands quickly, but stiffness or old injuries that ached in the cold...these things would slow a pilot down, could get her killed.

“Got them.” He eased her hands from the steering bar and carefully worked off her gloves. “Can you feel anything?”

The beginnings of pain had settled into her fingers and radiated down her forearms. It wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t very pleasant either. “Yes.” But then it eased from the inside, as if someone had given her a shot of kolto. “Kanan!”

“I’m not hurting, am I?”

“No, you’re not hurting. You’re...” she searched for words.  A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. “...doing that Jedi thing.”  

“Everything I do is a Jedi thing.” 

“You know what I mean. Are my fingers even going to be broken tomorrow?”

He cradled her hands in his own very gently. “No,” he said, composed and determined. “They are not.”

Good as new, she thought. Nobody else in the galaxy gets that, not even him.

“Ready to go to the common room?” he asked.

“Yeah. I mean, no. I’d rather not have you massage my thighs in front of everyone.” 

He slipped an arm behind her back and another under her legs and lifted her. “It’s a great location,” he teased. “You and Sabine can make plans for repairs while I’m doing it. Maybe I’ll get your lekku, too. They look a little cold.” 

“Kanan Jarrus, I will end you.” 

“See, I don’t think you will.” He carried her out the hatch, a blind man carrying a half-frozen woman through a broken ship. “Your bunk then?” he asked.

“Oh yes, definitely my bunk.”   


End file.
